Darts

This week was soooo good, man God is just blessing us so much. We had 3 baptisms last week. Tavu'i's baptism was so awesome! The whole ward showed up and it was just amazing. Also, Alofa and Dorriel got baptized! Honestly just miracles always happening.

We have 3 baptisms this week as well. We have these 2 ladies in one ward and then we found another 9 year old! Man I love 9 year olds. We found him yesterday doing a split with bishop, and he is getting baptized this Saturday. We also found a 14 year old guy that will be baptized in a couple weeks. We are just seeing so much progress and the ward members are helping out so much, especially the bishops and ward mission leaders.

I bought a dart board for our house, so we have been playing a ton of darts and its pretty awesome. Also, we have tons of holes in our door now where it is hanging up haha. A big cultural thing here is after baptisms when we are doing food lots of old people and the bishop and stuff will stand up and give a super long respectful speech, its pretty cool. Well my companion wanted to do one so he stood up and I was just laughing so hard, had to be there. Also, Talia (High chief, got baptized last week) handed me his cup of koko samoa and asked me to smell it, I could have sworn he said drink it, that was really awkward. Hope everyone has a great week!!!

 Tavu'i's Baptism

 Alofa and Teuila's Wedding

 Dorriel at the Visitors Center

 Alofa's Baptism

 Dorriel's Baptism

District Malosi

10 year olds too easy

Wow this last week has been amazing, so many miracles. We went and visited Talia with the bishop and he was all set for baptism! He had stopped smoking and really was ready to go! He got baptized along with Apolo on Saturday! Special times. 

Yesterday we talked with Bishop and he told us about a 10 year old girl that wants to be baptized, went and visited her, she will be baptized this Saturday. Her name is Dorielle, and she is maybe the cutest little girl ever. We are hyped. We also are getting Tavui, who is another High Chief, getting baptized tonight! He didn't want to wait all the way till Saturday haha, so it is a Wednesday night baptism! Also, Alofa will be baptized this Saturday, he is soooo ready, he is getting married tonight after the baptism for Tavui. The Lords hand is in the work!

We had some transfers last week in the zone, which resulted in me and my companion picking up 4 more wards, we are now covering 7 wards again. Keeping us busy as ever. We went and talked to the new bishops and they gave us like 15 referrals, 4 of them have accepted baptism so far. Man being a missionary is just soo goaty sometimes.

 Pesega-Church School

 Alofa and Teuila

 Trying to dry Baptismal Clothes before next Baptism

 Splits, Ropati and Elder Chu-Shing

 Apolo's Baptism!

Talia's Baptism!

General Conference!

General Conference was good, I can tell you just about everybody in Samoa is HYPED about the 2 hours of church, I think most people already follow this practice haha. I really enjoyed President Nelson talking about the Name of the church as well. So many times we hear "Loku Mamoga" which just means Mormon church. I am pretty sure nonmembers in Samoa don't even know the actual name of our Church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. So gonna have to start going away from the word Mamona. 

Apolo got married this morning! Which means she will be baptized this Saturday! We are super excited for her. Talia, which is the old Chief guy will most likely get baptized this Saturday as well. We will know for sure tonight if it will happen. We also moved up the other high chiefs baptism to next week!! So he will be baptized next week with another guy named Alofa.

We had zone conference this past week. It was really good as we talked about other styles of teaching and how we can make our lessons shorter, and how to better teach lessons, not people. I think it really helped a lot. We also did Baptisms for the dead with 3 of our recent converts yesterday! Love the temple.

Overall things going well here in Samoa, the future is always bright!

Zone Conference 

Baptisms for the Dead, all recent converts. Maina on Left, Jack, and Anna-La

Gang Wars

The highlight of this week was definitely the "gang wars". We were standing outside the mission office/temple talking to our recent convert Jack who works security when all these 25 year old guys starting fighting each other in the street. They were all wearing red bandanas and it was kind of fun to watch. Except there are like no such things as guns here so they were just throwing rocks hahaha. I was dying it was pretty funny. We came back like 2 hours later and it was still going on and the police finally got there, but the only thing that police have are sticks, so just imagine a bunch of guys throwing rocks at each other and a bunch of police with sticks trying to break it up. It was pretty funny. The next day the high chief of the village held a council and banned about 20 guys from the village, not at all what they want.

Anna-La got baptized! Super awesome baptism, I can't believe how prepared she was, faafetai i le bishop for the amazing referral as well. We have no baptisms this week, since it is General Conference weekend here (We watch it a week late), but we have at least one next week with Apolo. We got a referral for these guys from Fiji and Papua New Guinea and Vanuwatu that live together, we took two of them to the visitors center. They are sooo prepared! We were talking about the temple and he asked "How can I be worthy to enter the temple". Too easy. We were also able to do a little split with President and his Wife and did a really awesome FHE, spirit was strong. Everything is going amazing here. I am soooo grateful for the opportunity I have to be a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints!

Also, President got us a brand new white 12 seater, it has a gold stripe down the sides. It had the new car smell and only 7 kilometers when we got it. We were HYPED.

We bought a Shark

Tusi Pese

Tofa Uso

Mani-Homeless Guy lives in front of our house

Intake Malosi

Anna-La's Baptism

Old Men

We have been finding so many old men that are so prepared to accept this gospel. First, Sera's baptism was awesome! She had her wedding in the morning and then got baptized right after. Her father came to the baptism. Her father is a high chief (another one) on the backside of the island. He is not a member of the church. Bishop went up and gave closing remarks at the service and jokingly asked the father when he will be baptized.  Well when we are drinking our koko samoa after, the old high chief stands up and makes a speech saying he will be baptized in 2 weeks. Me and my companion just look at each other in shock. Apparently he had already told his whole village on the backside that he is changing churches. God is a God of miracles.

THEN, a couple days later we go back to that house and their is an old like 70 year old uncle that also lives at the same house. Apparently he has always been anti mormon a little bit, but joined in on the first FHE on Monday night with the family. He went and prayed that night asking God for help in his life. Me and my companion show up the next morning just planning to do a lesson with Sera, bro, he sits down and tells us how he prayed and we were the answer to his prayers and told us he would believe anything we say. WHATTTTTTTTT. So ya plus the high chief from last week, we have 3 old men like over 70 years old on baptismal date, and 2 of them are high chiefs. Super awesome.

This last week was miracle filled, especially with the two baptisms. I hope everyone has an awesome weeeek!!

E Paia i le Alii, O le Maota O le Alii

 Ropati and Elder Ropati 

 Elder Snuka's last day

Sera's Baptism

Hana's Baptism